The trouble with being a good G5 school is that you need to schedule P5 schools to bolster your resume for the playoff and to have any hope at being included in the next round of realignment, but no one wants to schedule a G5 game where a loss would be anything other than a flukey major upset. Ole Miss doesn’t play Memphis anymore because it’s too risky; they’ve beaten us too many times. It’s a really tough place to be in for teams who have the talent and infrastructure to compete with teams with more money and prestige, and moving to nine game conference schedules doesn’t help with this either. I think a playoff appearance will help with scheduling, though, and thankfully that’s something that JMU can control just by continuing to be excellent on the field.
Agreed on all fronts. And I genuinely do get the risk/reward factor in terms of why most P5’s are scared of scheduling competent G5’s, let alone an excellent FCS opponent. NDSU runs into that problem constantly, and JMU did not play another G5 until we transitioned in 2022 after beating SMU and then absolutely dragging ECU in previous meetings. I guess my thing is that if you are confident in your program, especially those at a higher level that see themselves as perennial playoff contenders moving forward, you shouldn’t be scared of a G5 opponent, plain and simple. UVA of course is a special case, as they have plenty more building to do before that’s even a remote possibility.
The trouble with being a good G5 school is that you need to schedule P5 schools to bolster your resume for the playoff and to have any hope at being included in the next round of realignment, but no one wants to schedule a G5 game where a loss would be anything other than a flukey major upset. Ole Miss doesn’t play Memphis anymore because it’s too risky; they’ve beaten us too many times. It’s a really tough place to be in for teams who have the talent and infrastructure to compete with teams with more money and prestige, and moving to nine game conference schedules doesn’t help with this either. I think a playoff appearance will help with scheduling, though, and thankfully that’s something that JMU can control just by continuing to be excellent on the field.
Agreed on all fronts. And I genuinely do get the risk/reward factor in terms of why most P5’s are scared of scheduling competent G5’s, let alone an excellent FCS opponent. NDSU runs into that problem constantly, and JMU did not play another G5 until we transitioned in 2022 after beating SMU and then absolutely dragging ECU in previous meetings. I guess my thing is that if you are confident in your program, especially those at a higher level that see themselves as perennial playoff contenders moving forward, you shouldn’t be scared of a G5 opponent, plain and simple. UVA of course is a special case, as they have plenty more building to do before that’s even a remote possibility.
Thank you for reading!